by Maranda
We moved into this "haunted" house when I was 11. For the first several months, everything seemed completely normal. The first strange thing to happen was when I was up at 1:00 am and in the kitchen to get something to drink. I filled up a glass of water, and when I turned to walk back to my room, an empty can of Mountain Dew flew off of the counter and hit the wall. I was immobilized and obviously too scared to move. About ten seconds later, my sister walked in and asked why I was making so much noise. Of course, when I told her the can floated on its own, she didn't believe me.
Things like that kept happening, and of course I was only 11, so no one believed me. Sucks being so little, doesn't it? Sometimes, my alarm clock would move and fall off of my desk on its own, even though it was no where near the edge. If I left empty soda cans in my room, they would without doubt fly off of whatever they were sitting on. No one else in the house witnessed this, and they pointed fingers at me and told me I was making it up. Because of them, I felt like I was going insane.
One night as I was just laying down to get some sleep, I heard someone scream in the family room. I bolted up and ran as fast as I could to the den and my mom was staring at the wall, her hands over her mouth. "What happened?" I asked. "The... the... th- the candle... it... FLEW AT ME!" I could tell she was in shock. The candle that was once sitting on the coffee table was now broken and in pieces on the floor. That's when I decided I wasn't insane, but we were being haunted.
Everyone in the house got used to things moving and occasionally flying at us. As we were adjusting to it, it seemed like it happened less often and less severely. Things would move only a couple of inches, and we'd laugh and sometimes even talk to our ghost. If we asked it to kindly stop, it would. If we asked for it to make its presence known, something would randomly move. I constantly horrified my friends by doing this. I was not afraid whatsoever of this ghost and felt like I was its friend in a way. I'd sometimes start up conversations with my friends and if we started talking about the ghost, it suddenly felt like someone had just sat down next to us. You could FEEL the presence, as if a real person was there next to you. It wasn't a scary feeling, it felt more peaceful than anything.
When I turned 13, I had a huge interest in the paranormal. I wanted to know more about the ghost. I always knew when it was there, I talked to it, I felt comfortable with it...but every time I asked it to communicate with me, nothing happened. One night, I was sitting against my bed, my knees up to my chest, drawing some comics for a school project. It was midnight, I was tired, and ended up falling asleep the way I was sitting with all my papers in my lap. In my "dream," I saw myself sitting there, in the position I fell asleep in, but I was awake in this dream, and someone was sitting next to me. She had auburn colored hair and looked about my age, maybe older. We were casually talking about what I was drawing. Then she said so clearly, "My name is Emma. I've lived here long before you did."
At that moment I woke up and I felt so weird. That little dream left a weird feeling on me all day. I instantly somehow knew more about this girl than she told me in the dream. She was 15, an only child, and a sweet girl. That's when I realized that Emma was the ghost. From then on, dreams like that happened more often. They'd be so real, as if I was having an out of body experience with Emma.
I told my mom about these dreams, and at first she was skeptical. One night before I went to sleep, I wrote on a piece of paper to Emma, "Please make yourself known to everyone else, too." Three days later, my mom told me she had a strange dream that someone kept talking to her when she was asleep. From then on, even my parents had weird ghostly dreams and heard a young teen girl talking to them. I smiled to myself. None of my friends believed me about Emma, until they spent the night at my house. They'd see things move, they'd feel someone touch them, and of course when I told Emma to make herself known, something would fall off my desk.
When I turned 14, Emma seemed to have vanished. There was no paranormal activity in the house. Everything was just too normal. No moving objects, no weird dreams, no voices, nothing. A year later, we moved out of that house to live closer to my grandparents. The teenage girl that moved into that house with her dad and brother told me that she constantly heard things in the closet and was wondering if the house was haunted. I shrugged and told her to be on the look out of weird things. Haven't heard from her since, but I won't forget all the stuff that went on in that house.
It doesn't stop there, though! We rented a house until we decided on where we really wanted to move. One night, as I laid in bed on my side, I felt something brush up against my waist. We had no pets and no one else was at home that night except for my mom and I. I ignored the feeling and tried to drift off to sleep. Then, in the middle of my dream, I woke up and felt someone squeezing me tightly from behind. The second I moved, the feeling vanished. Every night, I felt someone there, sitting on my bed or caressing my cheek. To be honest, it scared to me to death. That was something I couldn't really get used to.
Sometimes during the day, I'd feel someone brush up against me or poke me. I'd get so mad that I'd begin to yell into the air for the ghost to leave me alone. It would for a few days, then go back to annoying me. This wasn't at all like Emma. This ghost was annoying and scary.
One day in the shower, I heard someone whisper. It didn't scare me, though. What made me almost pass out was when the shower curtain flew open, but no one was there. That's when I officially declared the ghost a pervert, as well.
At last we moved out of that house. I wasn't the only one that had experienced that ghost though. My sister said that she had dreamt of him, and he said his name was "Renee."
Now, in our current house, there's no ghosts. Everything is as normal as can be. I think I'm tired of all that paranormal mumbo-jumbo. It's been years since we lived in the house with Emma, but I clearly remember being a little kid and sitting in my room with my friends and we'd have so much fun talking with a ghost.